Review: Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson

How could anyone resist a book with a title like Undead Girl Gang? I certainly couldn’t. And Lily Anderson’s debut novel is as utterly charming as the title (and the whimsical cover) would suggest.

Our protagonist, Mila Flores, has a smart, bitingly sarcastic voice that is a joy to read. Her sarcasm hides a deep well of bitterness thanks to her weight (she’s fat, not curvy or fluffy, okay?) and her race (one of the only girls of color at her fancy private school). But Mila is smart and capable, so smart and capable that when her best-and-only friend Riley is murdered, Mila manages to use witchcraft to bring her back from the dead–along with two other girls from her school, murdered by the same killer. With only a week before the zombified girls return to their graves, Mila and her new girl gang go on the prowl for the killer to exact justice. Along the way, the book explores questions of friendship, trust, deceit, and why exactly mean girls do the mean things they do. Mila gets the kind of closure most of us can only dream of, so this book is a satisfying read for anyone who has ever been bullied for being different. Additionally, the romantic subplot enhances the novel, rather than distracting from it.

The blurb for this book calls it “Veronica Mars meets The Craft” and I’d say that’s pretty dead-on. It reminded me of My Best Friend’s Exorcism, which also takes place among girls at a private school and features a fairly similar protagonist, smart and capable and stuck with mean girls, often hampered from doing what needs to be done merely by the limits of her age and the clueless adults around her. Mila’s voice also reminded me a bit of the darkly humorous and wonderfully self-aware Meddling Kids.

The audiobook is enhanced by the reading by Rebecca Soler, whose delightful voice I recognized from other YA audiobooks like the Lunar Chronicles series. Soler’s youthful narration style keeps the tone light even while the story deals with heavy topics like murder, resurrection, young love, and bullying.

As a final note, it was really nice (as a fat person) to read about a fat heroine in a genre (science fiction, fantasy, or horror) novel. While it is possible to find young adult novels about fat characters, it’s a much greater challenge to find books about fat protagonists in the genres I love. I’m not a big reader of contemporary fiction, where the few fat characters can be found. I much prefer horror and fantasy, where fat people are as badly underrepresented as disabled people. And Mila also stands out because she’s one of the few fat characters I’ve read who isn’t bemoaning her fatness, or trying to lose weight–she accepts her body as it is, and only gets angry when other people deny or diminish her fatness. A book about a fat person that isn’t centered around the protagonist’s fatness? YUP. This book is a freaking unicorn, people. You need to read it.

Overall, I give this novel 5/5 resurrections via lip gloss.

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